


In the Beginning

by PTomlin



Series: A Thousand Years [2]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Multi, tags will be added as they become applicable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:59:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PTomlin/pseuds/PTomlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She remembers crawling from the wreckage of a downed ship onto an island of golden sand.  She remembers strange creatures in the water that sang to her and wove green things into her dark hair where it trailed into the sea, unable to move for days on end. She remembers, vaguely, hoping for someone else’s safety, but she cannot quite recall who, or why it was important.  She remembers, even more distantly, a shadow and a man, a man who never came home. </p><p>For a long time, that is all she remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a very self-indulgent fic, in that I have no set trajectory for its plot line other than that it will be Seraphina-centric and that I want Sera/Tooth to be endgame. (I figure I'll tag it when it happens.)
> 
> Chapters will be short but hopefully frequent.

She remembers crawling from the wreckage of a downed ship onto an island of golden sand.  She remembers strange creatures in the water that sang to her and wove green things into her dark hair where it trailed into the sea, unable to move for days on end. She remembers, vaguely, hoping for someone else’s safety, but she cannot quite recall who, or why it was important.  She remembers, even more distantly, a shadow and a man, a man who never came home.

For a long time, that is all she remembers.

The world is wild, and she learns to be wild with it.  In turn, it teaches her its secrets, and she becomes something new again, not mistress but mother, and that’s what they call her. Mother. These beings that resemble her form but not her spirit, that build shelters against the wildness around them.  They call her many other  names too, names that change and shift as their shelters rise and fall with the cycle of the years, the cycle of the seasons, the cycle of the stars. Because even the wild is predictable in its own way, keeping to a rotation and a rhythm that she feels like the beat of a second heart beneath her skin, the thrum of life and life and life.

And there is death, too, but she has found that this facet of the great circle belongs to another mother, one that does not share her wildness.  Death is too quiet for her.  She prefers the drumbeat in her blood.

She meets others, who are mothers and not mothers, those like her who do not succumb to the ebb and flow of the cycle.  She learns their ways, their designs on this world that she has claimed.  Mostly they are boring.  The temporal beings, her children, give them names and their desires and pay homage in kind and for the most part she allows them to carry on as they see fit.  

But occasionally she disagrees with one or another of those who are like her, and it is not long before the rumors spread even among their immortal ranks of a goddess who commands the wild, the winds, the earth itself.  

But these rumors are not true. Wildness does not bend to the will of one, does not deign to submit to a single entity.

All she does is ask.

Some of the immortal ones are less boring. There is a creature, long of ear and foot, hidden away within her earth in tunnels and chambers dug deep.  He has been digging as long as she has been wild, although it took her many cycles to realize it. He keeps to himself, preferring the company of his eggs and his chocolates, but she finds him, occasionally, in the red land.

He did not crash, not like she did. She knows, because she asked him once, in a language that coats her tongue like a memory, and he’d answered in kind. There is a great sadness about the rabbit, but she knows it is not her place to ask. She feels she has forgotten something, something important, some knowledge they once shared, and it troubles her.  Sometimes, when she catches him on the surface, he looks at her almost as if he recognizes her, face turned from her and frowning glances out of the corner of his vision. Perhaps she resembles someone he has lost.

She likes the creature, for she knows he takes as much responsibility and delight in the flora as she does.   He amazes her, every century or so, with something new.  She hoards these rare gifts with a jealous eye and watches them flourish across the continents. He holds a fascination for her, as well, because in his appearance he is so unlike the other creatures that inhabit her earth, and she knows them all, from the bird-women of the east to the wolf-men of the middle continents, the ice-beings of the poles and the snake-peoples of the dry lands. From the temporal ones of this earth to the stragglers from the stars, their kinds are varied and beautiful, but there is none like her friend beneath the earth or on it.  

He is alone.  

On a whim, she fashions tiny cousins in his image--likewise long of ear and foot and fast as the wind over the plain--and sets them to populate the land.   They do well, and it is not the same, she knows, but she delights in watching them flourish.  The temporal ones call them by names of their own devising, and she doesn’t instruct them otherwise, because these are not Pooka, as she once heard him call himself. They do not speak or stand or paint like him.  They are a homage, and a little bit of a jest.  

He gifts her a flower in a triple star in return, painted like fire and light, and she smiles for days.

There are others, too, residents and refugees alike, and she idly wonders what kind of world lies beyond this one to bring so many to its shores.  It is another thing she does not ask. She has never needed to know anything that her wild world could not tell her itself.

The world will not let her leave, and she has no desire to do so. She feels its pull like a tether, tying her to the earth, to its rock and dirt and green and life, and she breathes through the thrum of wildness in her core, breathes with the heartbeat of the cycle, and aches to know that it loves her as much as she loves every inch of it. She watches the tide of time fall over the earth in waves, a thousand beginnings and a thousand ends, all inexplicably connected, overlapping, woven into a dance that sets her aflame and soothes her all at once, and she glories in the burn of it. She watches as a mother ought, and guards and guides as a mother ought, and somewhere between the seasons she grows old-but-not-old, and notices without noticing as the world ties her closer to itself with each passing cycle, closer to the core of it, closer to its heart.  

It beats, and she beats, and the cycle circles on.


	2. Chapter 2

The golden man surprises her.

In the depths of a moonless night over a warm coast where the boats bob gently in their harbor, she meets light where there should not be light, glowing streams that shine more steadily than the fires in the temporal ones’ shelters, streams that twist through the air and form strange shapes as she ventures close enough to examine them.  The streams are many, and they seem to reach, like they are searching for something in the darkness. There are too many to number, and she cannot see their source for the twisting path they draw through the still air.  When she extends a hand to touch the one nearest, it flows over her hands, grainy, and softer than it had any right to be.

It is sand.

She has seen things, over the millennia. Strange things, unexplained wonders, beautiful mysteries.  She has taken each one in stride, learning, giving each its due of wonder. And moving on.

So why does the presence of this sand cause her heart to beat so strongly within her breast?

She dips into a larger chute, trails her fingers in the stream, and thinks of water, a thousand rivers superimposed in her mind’s eye, and before her next breath, tiny fish begin to jump and splash, each one becoming unique in its form and growing larger until one by one they escape the stream altogether, dancing around her in a school of golden light.  

As she watches, a group of the sand-made fish dart off and separate, diving purposefully toward the cluster of shelters below.  They disappear near the shoreline and she wait, but they do not return. Something drags at her mind like the tug of spider silk, something about stars and wishes, and she shakes her head, frowning up at the canopy of lights above her.  Stars. That is what those lights are. She knows this, one of the many things that she knows but cannot say how she knows.

And she cannot recall why anyone would want to wish on them.

She trails the nearest branch of gold, the stream that birthed her sand-fish, and determines to follow it. All rivers have a source, and this sand behaved like water given flight.  If she follows it far enough, she will find who is responsible.  

She is curious about this sand that can see into the mind.

The trail takes her away from the shore, across the sea and its litter of tiny islands that pass nearly invisible beneath her in the dark. She knows them by their feel, so far below, by the frenetic pulse of _life life life_ that is different from the sinuous pulse of life from beneath the waters. She follows the sand across a narrow strip of land and down a long craggy coastline, its jungles turned ashen in the inky blackness.  Currents break off here and there to twist themselves over the treetops, moving inland toward the dwellings hidden beneath the cover of roof and branch and night, but she stays her course.  She follows far, and the winds carry her swiftly. She has sought out mysteries in the far reaches of the world, explored every inch of the land and sea and sky that has claimed her as its own.  

Time and distance make little concern for one such as she, and there is discovery begging to be chased.

As the shape of the land begins to curve more sharply in upon itself, she sees her prize, a bright light, a beacon, a gathering of sand so thick it shines across the night. Channels of sand pour from it in a circle like the legs of the octopus that clings to the coral.  

She finds him, her golden man, on a mountaintop.  Her mountaintop, because they are all hers. She is Pachamama, in this land. The golden man is perched in the center of the golden cloud and looks up at the rush of wind that signals her approach.   He looks up, and she looks back, hovering at the edge of his cloud, still and silent and waiting.

He knows her.

She can see it in his eyes, not like the rabbit’s half-sure glances, no, this is true recognition.

But she does not know him.

“Who are you?” she asks in the ancient tongue.

He does not speak. But he does. Doesn’t he? Not words, nothing tangible, but the meanings fall on her ears like the old languages roll from her lips.

_My name is Sanderson ManSnoozie._

She aches to answer him in kind, this beautiful silent communication unhindered by breath and mouth, but knows it isn’t possible, but doesn’t know _how_ she knows.

“How can I understand words where there aren’t any?”

_Sandspeak,_ he offers simply. _It is the language of my home world, a language that few have the patience to learn._ He pauses.   _Or had, once._

“You are one of the refugees, then.”

He nods. _I am. And you understand, because you were taught to understand from a young age. Your father thought it a useful talent._

“I have no father. I am mother to all. Clearly you have not been here long, Golden Man.”

He chuckles, silently, dipping his head to hide the melancholy edge of it, but she catches him. She knows sorrow; the world is full of it.  She saw it in the Pooka and she sees it in her Golden Man, and wonders again what sort of worlds they all come from, to bear such sadness across the stars.

_You have not called me that since you were a child,_ he says.He looks at her, solemn, tired.   _I have been asleep for a long time,_ he says.

“I do not know you.”

_You did, once._

She doesn’t argue with him. She knows that forgotten things lurk in her mind, a very great many forgotten things, but the world has taught her things to fill those gaps and she has never missed them overly much.  But there is one thing she wonders, one thing that, if he speaks the truth, he could tell her.

“What was my name?”

His golden eyes burn with the sorrow that fills them.  She regrets putting it there, if only because it sits wrong on his face.  He is a creature of light, of brightness.  Some might say he is creature of goodness, but she is not one to put such labels on things.  She regrets, but she doesn’t share his sorrow. Perhaps they did know each other once, but she is new, now. She has been remade.

_Seraphina,_ he says at last.   _Seraphina Pitchiner._

She expects the name to mean something.  It feels right on her shoulders, settling into her skin. But it is just a name.

“What are you going to do now, Sanderson ManSnoozie?”

Disappointment in his gaze. He had expected the name to mean something too, she supposes. He looks up, scanning the empty sky.

_I will wait for the Moon._

The Moon. She has tracked the movement of moonbeams across her world.  But theirs is a language that she has not learned, and their silver whispers do not pull any strange remembering from the hidden corners of her mind.

She is unbalanced.  The pulse of _lifelifelife_ at her core beats irregular like a murmur and the skin of her fingertips feels tight. Something is shifting, or will shift, or has shifted already, but it will not be felt properly for a long while. The waking of the Sanderson ManSnoozie has altered the pattern and she cannot yet account for what will come of it. For now she listens to the echoes of change and knows that the thousand burning questions on her tongue will wait.

She is Mother. She has, after all, all the time in the world.

And dawn is beginning to touch the sky to the east.

“I must leave you, Golden Man.”

He nods, accepting her departure, beginning to reel in his sand.  

She wants to ask him where it comes from, and what it does. She wants to follow him to see where he will go once he is finished collecting it. She wants, for the first time, to know what had happened so long ago to send so many crashing to her shores.

Because if he is truly from beyond the stars, and he had truly known her, then what does that make her?

But she is Mother, and it is not time. And as she turns to cross the waters, the Golden Man’s farewell follows her.

_Goodbye, Butterfly._

She does not look back.


End file.
